TORONTO -- With hard speed limiter enforcement just months away, Ontario transportation officials still haven't sealed up the privacy and liability loopholes that remain in he legislation.

That's what Owner-Operators Business Association of Canada (OBAC) is saying, anyway.

OBAC Director Joanne Ritchie wrote a letter to Peter Hurst, CVSA past president and director, Carrier Safety & Enforcement at the Ontario Ministry of Transport and Quebec Ministere des Transports Director Benoit Cayouette, reminding them that these issues regarding the 105 km/h speed limit mandate raised by the owner-op association still have not been addressed by either ministry.

The rule, which applies to any truck operating in Ontario and Quebec, is scheduled to take affect Jan. 1, with an educational 'soft enforcement' period until June 2009.

"We are particularly concerned about access to proprietary historical data and trip record information stored in an unprotected layer of the engine ECM's memory," she wrote. "This data resides alongside the road speed limit setting enforcement personnel would seek during verification."

This past fall, Today's Trucking magazine published an exclusive article, 'Pandora's ECM,' highlighting some of these privacy pitfalls. In it, truck and engine experts explained how this data is accessible to anyone accessing an ECM in search of a road speed limit setting.

More recently, in an exclusive todaystrucking.com audio interview, CVSA President Darren Christle admitted that questions of who actually owns engine data, how it can be controlled, and whether enforcement needs permission from motor carriers or truck owners to access it, have still not been answered by lawmakers.

OBAC has it's own opinion on the matter, though: "We strenuously object to ministry inspectors viewing and possibly downloading that information for their own purposes," writes Ritchie. "We assert that data contained in an engine ECM is in fact the property of the owner of the vehicle, and should not be available to anyone else, including the Ministries, without permission or a warrant. Since the verification process is done electronically, no one but the inspector would be aware that a data download had occurred."

OBAC also wants a detailed explanation of how enforcement will be carried out. "In particular, we would like to hear from you promptly regarding hook-up and verification procedures," says Ritchie, adding that corruption of ECM data – although unlikely – is possible as a result of improper connection procedures.

In the meantime, OBAC is advising its members and other truck owners to take "whatever steps are required to protect this data" until an official policy is issued by the transportation ministries in Ontario and Quebec regarding ECM data recovery and use.

Furthermore, owner-ops shouldn't assist inspectors in making the connections or participating in any way in the verification process so that should any damage occur, OBAC insists.